The days after
by jammydoughnut
Summary: Jim and Leonard talk. Really talk.


Hi folks, no idea where this came from but it's been gnawing away for a while. There is a completely separate second part that is also screaming to escape if you want it but I would imagine you could just stop at this chapter if you wanted.

Hope you enjoy it.

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Leonard used his access card to swipe into the medical suite Jim had been moved to a few days before. Normally reserved for Flag Officers and off planet dignitaries it had a small ante room for the medical staff to check notes and set up treatments, god forbid they stayed in the same room as one of the chosen few and disturb them. It also helped keep Jims 'special history' and medical treatment slightly more secret as the second set of notes with the curveball annotations such as "Time of Death" needed to be less known. But who was he kidding half the crew of the Enterprise had seen the body bag, anyone in sickbay when he had unzipped the blue cover knew what he saw. Even if they hadn't worked out from the weeping nurses, his anguished cries to keep Khan alive when he commed the Bridge, the broken stowaway science officer playing fast and loose with the cryo tube, the reverent way they laid Jim in the 300 year old technology would have given them pause for thought.

None of it had come out though. Leonard didn't really know if it was for the love of Jim or the threats of HQ, mainly the former but let HQ think it was the latter. Nothing new to see in the notes, either set, which was good but he knew that Jim would be itching to be out. He knocked on the doorjam to the main room which was bathed in the reflected light of the setting sun and waited for a grunt of acquiescence. In any other circumstances the view would be worth a million dollars, East over to Alameda Island and the Academy airfield where just under five years ago a shuttle had landed with two of the most unorthodox new recruits ever to be seen in San Francisco. Now it was a hive of rescue hovers bringing in their grim cargo of broken bodies and taking out recovery and investigation crews. The last time anyone had been found alive had been two days ago and Leonard knew they had switched focus now, the rest of the world would know with the nightly newscasts. His heavy measured steps moved across the floor till he stood slightly behind and to the side of the high backed chair that had been angled to the window. He placed a hand on the wing side and pretended to look at the view too, but he didn't need to look at that anymore though he knew Jim would have a running commentary in his head about every bumped landing and every twitchy manoeuvre. Had the epic FUBAR that had been the Narada incident not taken place, and he had kept his cadetship despite Spocks attempt to have him dismissed, Jim was tracked as a hover flier for the rescue squad in his first active position. Jim would have made a brilliant space, air, sea rescue pilot, fearless enough to go out into the murk in all conditions but not stupid enough to put the rest of his crew in danger, whatever anyone else thought. Himself, yes, others only as the final option.

Jim raised a hand slightly from the arm of the chair in greeting, most people would have thought it slightly insolent but Leonard saw it as a sign of utter exhaustion. That a man who blazed with the energy of a collapsing supernova who talked the hind legs off a mule within seconds of you entering the room and could hold three conversations at once and not forget his thread would just tip a finger at his best friend. No it was wrong on so many levels.

"Wasup Doc?" Jim asked breathily.

"Going into air traffic now too?" he asked lightly, having seen enough in the reflection to make his blood boil. Jim laughed, which turned into a cough that seemed to come from the bottom of his chest and sounded as if it had sloshed through a barrel of water on the way up.

"Dammit Jim what did I tell you about over doing it?"

Jim looked genuinely confused as Bones knelt down in front of him and pulled out the foot rest as he gently lifted his legs up and reclined the back just enough that he couldn't really see the view anymore. The coughing died down to a slight recurring grumble, like an old fashioned combustion engine turning over and failing to spark. Failing to spark, not an analogy he really wanted to use. Jim just watched his favourite mother hen snatch both a blanket and tricorder and monitored every move as first his legs were covered and he was thoroughly scanned, again.

"I just sat here Bones, I read the newsfeed, I watched some brain mash tv, I did the PT with Hulkman the physio and I only needed the head once and that cute nurse helped me all the way over the other side of the room, I even sat down when I was in there." He added with the ghost of the Jim Kirk patented smirk.

"And I told you to keep your legs raised, the radiation did a number on your cardiac muscle and it means your heart can't cope with long periods of work. You can't force it Jim and unless you start looking after yourself it won't get any better." Leonard looked pointedly at the apple with one bite out of it, the high energy protein shake with half a sip gone on the table and the emesis basin closer than both of those.

Jim looked at one of the ceiling spot lights because he had no answer to that.

"I'm going to restart the IV Jim." He waged a finger in his Captains face to forestall any grousing. "That rattling is fluid building up in your lungs and another chest infection brewing, you need energy to fight it and we're going to have to give you that from a drip. Plus it saves me hypoing you ten times and getting a burst eardrum from your whining." Bones went to move away to set the drugs order up but turned back slightly. "Then we talk."

Leonard grabbed the newly synthesised drugs from the medical replicator and a bag of enhanced saline from the supply cupboard and emptied one syringe into the drip. He walked over and hung the bag attaching it to the port on Jims hand and adjusted the flow slightly, Jim followed him everywhere with just his eyes, it creeped him out the lack of whining he'd wanted Jim to trust him for years and now perhaps he did it felt wrong. He held up the second hypo and tapped the air out of it,

"This might be a little cold and you might think that it's stinging." Jim just nodded and grimaced then relaxed a little as the drugs hit his system.

"You always get me the good stuff Bones."

"Not as good as you were getting over the last few days but I am not telling you again you do not need to be in pain, it is not a punishment for anything you have done, you do not need to atone for any perceived sin." He ruffled the kids hair. "Admiral Barnett will do that for you." He said with a chuckle.

"For what we are about to receive." Said Jim quietly, which was how he had always left the dorm when he had been called into an academic meeting at the Academy.

Jim heard the whir of the scanner again and what he always thought of as Bones happy harrumph, the one that said Jim was as good as he was going to be at that moment and didn't need any more jabbing or poking.

Bones came back to Jims side and pulled over one of the visitors chairs so he faced his friend and tapped the shades so he had nothing to look at but him. He did leave one last piece of control to his friend and Captain as he passed him the chairs' electronic control.

"Leave your feet up, it will reduce the physical stress on your heart for now." He said quietly. Jim took a few deep breaths now his chest was clearing and brought himself up so he was looking at Bones again, top lip curled happily.

"How's your day been?"

"Busy."

"Tell me about it, tell me about what I'm missing Bones, paint me a picture." He said reaching out with his untethered hand. Bones automatically took it and started rubbing a dry thumb over his paper thin knuckles. He could see Jims enquiry for what it really was, deflection from the real question but he also recognised that Jim was in a bubble and craved news.

"It's still mad out there Jim, most of the fires are out but we're still getting plenty of minor knocks and scrapes from the emergency guys who are still going at it hammer and tongs. Scotty says they finally isolated the warp core from the Vengeance and made it safe, he's itching to use it in 'prise when she refits, means they can pull the bitch back into space and start filling the hole."

Jim nodded, "Scotty has a point that sort of speed could get us further and faster to chart the universe, five years and we could be out of the far side of the Beta Quadrant before we had to turn back."

Bones shivered and rolled his eyes, five years on from that launch pad in Riverside and he now knew he wasn't going to die in some small shuttle crash, a tiny crack wasn't going to make his blood boil, it would either be Jim or some sodding great disaster and after two of those he felt pretty invincible.

"They've declared the rescue over." He waited a beat while Jim processed that "and they have started moving the refugees in earnest, Los Angeles has taken about half and Jerusalem and Geneva have offered spaces, lucky Khan hit a mainly business area in morning." Bones knew he had to take the wins where he could, what he hadn't told Jim was that one of the buildings hit was the Academy Pre-Med building, it had been full early in the morning and many of the faculty tutors were also the staff of the very hospital they were in, spare medics had been flown in from across the Federation so the hospital was complete disarray unless you were Jims bubble.

"The Comanche's won the Dodgeball." Jim smiled at that one, he had captained the command faculty team, "But it was against the Sioux", the weak link in physical endeavours - the science team, "They get the Mohawks next week, hey perhaps if you feel up to it we can visit. Medics will kick your butts."

Jim just shook his head "No chance you guys were good on tactics but too worried about damaging your hands and heads."

"Be grateful Jim these hands and this head have saved your ass more times than I care to remember, just because you command types don't need a brain to think with doesn't mean we all get away with it."

They both started to laugh and Leo itched to lift a glass of bourbon with his right hand like he normally would when they were doing boys night in.

"Chris used to joke that it was the bruised brain tissue that gave us the edge." Jim shut his eyes at a flashback of Pike looming over him in clinic after some beating in Parrises Squares.

Bones gave him a second or two to collect those thoughts. "They read his will, he asked that you take his ashes back to Mojave. I'd be happy to travel with you when you're up to it, but I warn you that won't be for a while."

"I wondered what he wanted, I think I would have chosen that if he hadn't said. I'm glad he asked me to do this for him."

"There's a letter and a few things he left you, but the beak wants to give you those directly. He left a generous bequest for a scholarship for the Academy, to be given to a deserving young person with a dubious past who could prove they were turning their life around. Wonder what prompted that huh?"

"Well he's going to fill the Academy with individuals or make sure the JAG never gets bored." Jim laughed again for a second till the knawing pain hit him again, it was getting very slightly easier but it felt like it had only happened last week. The clock had reset for Jim, he had forgotten much of what had happened in the days preceding his death and Bones had had to gently tell Jim that the man he had come to see as the father he never knew wasn't coming to see him, now or ever. It was like having to watch Chris Pike die all over again only this time there hadn't been anything to take his mind off the pain.

"Uhurha sends her regards, Chekovs Mom apparently promises you a lifetime of cookies for saving her boy and Sulu is asking when he gets to take you climbing. Before you ask I said never unless the mountain is purely horizontal."

"Awh Man you suck the fun out of everything." He said smiling "But the cookies sound good and I wouldn't want to face down Mama Chekov on the best of days and today is not the best of days."

There it was, the very fine chink in Jims armour, the very rare gift that allowed him access to the soft underbelly of Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

"If you want cookies I can replicate some now, hell I should be able to get the galley to make some real ones in a few minutes the double chocolate chip are out of this world as my hips can attest."

"Nah I'm good, well not good, hell you know what I mean."

"Actually Jim I don't 'cause you're not talking. You refusing chocolate really worries me." He tried to lighten the mood, Jim needed a friend as much as a doctor, so he left it a beat to allow Jim to answer.

Jim looked at the apple on the table, now brown and unappetising, since when had an apple turned his stomach?

"I just feel sick, I am sick and Bones it just hurts now."

Bones pulled his thinking face, it normally proceeded some sort of hypo for Jim and he visibly flinched. It was so normal that Bones didn't even notice as he tapped the spent hypo from a few minutes before on his chin while he thought.

"Before or after?"

"What?"

"Before you eat or after you eat? When do you feel sick?" sassed the Doctor in words of one syllable.

"Before, after all the goddamm time, what does it matter? I eat, I wretch, it comes back up, I think I've turned myself inside out and now I'm getting sick just thinking about food." Jim went to pull his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose and found the drip still attached, he shook it as if that would dislodge it. "Stop pushing me, trust me it'll fade in time."

Jim looked down at the extremely interesting weave on the blanket and started plucking at the corner, Leonard recognised it as one of Jims very few tells. Jim often did that when he was thinking of his teenage years, when the only thing he had owned had been a blanket and his own determination, whether it had been the months in a cave on Tarsus or from his itinerant years roaming round Iowa on a bike with not much more than his clothes and a bag full of pride. Many of the other patients in sick bay would throw off the sheets and blankets as they ran from the place as they were discharged, even in his haste Jim would make sure they were pulled back and neat – then move as fast as a photon torpedo. His cabin could be like the aftermath of a tornado but the covers would always be parade standard and you never, ever sat on his bed during the day.

Sifting through this information brought Bones to an unwanted conclusion. This was something he'd managed before, though even he had never seen the notes from Jims recovery from Tarsus there were markers all over his body that spoke of malnutrition and deficiencies in his diet. Jim had occasionally told him about the daily struggle to find enough food to feed all the kids he'd collected, usually neglecting to remember he was still a minor himself, often living on scraps that wouldn't have feed the family chickens back in Georgia and though he'd never said it out loud by the time anyone had realised that there was an issue and had sent help it had nearly been too late for his little group. Out of necessity very few people knew about him or his kids, Bones suspected that Star Fleet had scared the kid Jim into silence to cover their own mistakes as well as keep him safe. There was never conclusive evidence that Kudos had been operating alone and there were still a few human supremacist groups that believed that Kudos had been right in his eugenic approach. Marcus had been one of them.

He reached forward and caught the hand again to stop the thread picking, next it would move to his finger nails and then to the IV line in lieu of any other scabs or scars. Once he had found Jim in the shower after an away mission gone wrong, the water running cold nearly two pints of blood down the drain where he had worried a gash on his leg for over two hours. He had strapped him down, fixed him up and when he was back at full mental capacity Bones had torn him a new one in the sort of manner that only a concerned friend at the end of his tether could. They'd both been in tears by the end of it and Jim had been much more open about his demons since.

"It matters because it helps me understand what I need to do to fix it Jim."  
"I'm not broken Len." He replied in a dark tone

"Ok bad choice of words, it's the doctor in me coming out and we'll agree to differ on the broken part, but you need to eat real solid food, protein synthesisers and glucose drips are nothing more than holding pattern. To recover you need all your systems working, and that includes your digestive tract, you need proper protein to build your cardiac muscle, fats and carbs so you can stand up for long enough to pee Jim. I have drugs that can suppress your gag reflex, reduce acid reflux, slow down or speed up gut motility but I can't change what's in your head."

"It's hard Bones, when you know the wrong thing works for you"

"Well this time is different, you're not doing this alone, if you don't want to talk to me there are professionals we can call on all day and all night." Jim was already shaking his head but Bones ploughed on "Or you have friends up the ying yang. Nyota is as good a listener as a talker, Chekov can bring his mom, though you might not get to talk with that one, Sulu will blush that much you won't need the lights on, Scotty will listen to you and then completely bamboozle you with his nacelles and Spock, either one of them, will ignore you for being illogical and then tell you about some sort of weird fish on Risa Seven that can go for seventeen years without eating but then eats it's mate after it has been inseminated."

Somehow they both kept a straight face for at least five seconds before dissolving into fits of giggles.

"I'll try the drugs Bones and drop the shakes, I can't stand them even when I can keep them down, taste like snot and mashed potatoes."

Bones was glad he was sitting down, James T Kirk asking for drugs he resisted the urge to check if the sky had actually fallen in.

"Besides the Spocks are going back to Vulcan for a few months while they rebuild Enterprise and I'm betting Uhura will be threatening the both of them till they take her with them." Bones raised an eyebrow.

"That could be interesting." He said while trying to slot all the things he could use to quell Jims issues into place.

"Oh my God Bones, bad mental image." He made gagging noises that had Bones on his feet until he realised it was the brats bad taste in jokes coming out, Jim held up a hand. "The Vulcan Science Academy had one of the best language labs in the galaxy because they've been at it for so long and she wants to play with the toys. Until now they wouldn't let outsiders in but I'm guessing she now has enough favours to call in and enough tame Vulcans to smooth the waters."

Bones lightly cuffed him as he went back to the medical replicator.

"The drugs can help Jim but only so far, you have to want to eat too so what do you want to try first?"

Jim sat up a little straighter and paused. His brain was saying nothing but he forced that thought away.

"Do you mean what you want me to have or what I really want?"

Bones snorted as he turned away from the medical database he was consulting on the PADD he'd picked up.

"Trust you to use the tiny excuse of dying to get out of eating your greens again."

"That's what I'm talking about Bones! I love that I get to go against all your advice to follow your advice."

"There's logic in there somewhere I suppose, but don't try that sentence on the Hobgoblin or his head will explode." Bones cocked his head. "Actually I'll keep that one for the next time he really annoys me. So what will it be Jim, greasy cheeseburger with four types of sugar laden sauce, chocolate whoopee pie with extra cream or god help me four cheese pizza with enough fries to feed Scotty?"

"If it were Scotty the pizza would be deep fried too." Stated Jim as if to make everything else sound positively healthy.

Bones just stared from under one raised eyebrow.

Jim looked down and picked again. "One thing, if I could have anything?" Bones nodded waiting for the sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese take away now buried under the Vengeance or the dough balls they'd had on Mextia, a planet on the other side of the galaxy as a delaying tactic.

"Real strawberries and cream." Jim looked dreamy for a second as he saw the red fruits dancing in front of his face taunting him. "If one good thing could come out of this Khan could have at least cured one allergy, but no. I often wonder if it was strawberries that gave me the allergies you know that Bones?"

"How so kid?" Bones suddenly became interested, Jim had some strange ideas but they were quite often proved right.

"They were the last thing I ate properly at my Aunts house, rushed through them to get to the proclamation in the square, they thought Kudos would be announcing the arrival of the cavalry. Boy were they wrong, perhaps that's why I don't trust adults either, anyway I think they were probably infected by the fungus too." Jim smiled "See and you got me to talk, win win Bones."

"You keep thinking that Jim." He said still distracted and then suddenly dodged out of the room. Jim tried to look round to see where he went but the sides of the chair were too wide.

A few seconds later Bones nearly danced back into the room waving a data stick and grinning ear to ear.

"I, well we, Mr Sulu and I were hoping to suprise you for your birthday but now seems like the better time for a gift, it's not perfect but I think you'll like it."

Jim looked confused but wanted to mirror his friends obvious enthusiasm.

"Well I'm sure I could use a new data chip, does it have any porn on it?"

"No it does not you infant, it has a prototype Sulu and I were working on for you, I isolated the specific gene sequence that controls the protein that causes the reaction and we've created a fruit that should taste the same and not kill you. Sulu is trying to breed the plant so you can have the real thing but for now we have the sequencing for a mock fruit from the replicator."

"You've lost me Bones, I'm still a little fuzzy."

Bones rolled his eyes back and shook his head. "Strawberries Jim, you can have what you want, they might look a bit funny and we haven't managed to get the differentiation in the sequencing between the fruit and the pips but I'm going to have a guess you prefer them seedless anyway."

Jim was beaming and starting to push himself out of the chair.

"Sit still, you're supposed to be conserving energy."

Chastised Jim instead set himself back upright and pulled the table in, pushing the detritus of earlier in the day as far away as possible, he suddenly realised he was actually looking forward to eating. Bones swept the old food away and dumped it in the reprocessor as he brandished another hypo, Jim sighed and extended his neck but found himself getting cuffed lightly again as his hand was snatched up. Bones just shook his head wearily.

"They give this to pregnant women and those with chronic motion sickness, suppresses the vagus nerve and stops some of the feedback from your cochlear, it really helped me."

"What last time you got morning sickness?" Jim scoffed lightly

"No the last time I took a shuttle with you at the helm cowboy."

The replicator buzzed and Leonard went to collect the contents, Jim looked like a kid at Christmas and Bones reflected that this was the most animated he'd been since, well in the last few weeks. There was a little colour in his cheeks and the hydro drip had plumped his skin out a little, just this one last thing and he could truly believe that one day Jim would be fit to go back out into the Black, all ready to get himself injured again. He shuddered slightly and then looked at the contents of the bowl and pulled another quizzical look, Sulu really did need to do some more work.

Bones took the bowl and a spoon over to the table,

"I suppose if you don't look too close you might believe it."

Jim looked suspiciously into the bowl and burst out laughing, the 'strawberries' were little red pyramids with straight sides and flat tops.

"They look like something Spock would design, so they all fit neatly into a box, but the proof will be in the eating." Jim grabbed the spoon and was about to dig in when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Just a second Jim I'm taking no chances." He went and picked up one of the ready use adrenaline hypos and then nodded as he sat back down watching Jim intently.

Jim rolled the spoon around the bowl and toyed with one or two of the faux fruits, he had dreamed of the day when he could have strawberries for so long now it seemed irreverent to just shovel them it. Finally he picked one out, caught a generous blob of cream on the end and sucked the spoon dry. He started to chew and his face lit up with the spark that defined him.

"Oh my God Bones, I've died and gone to heaven." Bones quirked an eyebrow

"Sorry, bad choice of metaphor but seriously the best thing I've tasted in like forever."

Bones nodded and stared intently at his face.

"How do you feel? Any tightness, tingling, nausea?"

"No Bones, I feel amazing and these are like the best." Rather like a dog with his breakfast he guarded the bowl, another behaviour to be salted away for analysis later.

Finishing the bowl and scrapping everything but the pattern Jim pushed the bowl away and sat back lightly patting his stomach.

"Never say I give you nothing." Said Bones brandishing his final present.

A tin of full sugar honest to goodness Coke.

"Now I do know I've died and gone to heaven, you never let me have this and when I do the lecture about losing my teeth and the acid eating through my gut which will go all flabby with the amount of sugar really takes the pleasure out of it."

Bones brandished a straw.

"I'm not that bad am I?" Jim just nodded as he struggled to open the tin, Bones resisted the urge to help and sat looking suitably chastised. "It might help settle your tummy, always helps me the morning after a good night before, it was marketed as a stomach tonic a few hundred years ago and besides replaces your blood sugar."

Jim took a sip and sighed, "You do know I now have a shed load of ammo the next time you go all righteous on me."

"Yer I know Kid, but it's worth it." He paused "Besides I plan on sedating you into next week so you forget everything we've discussed in the last ten minutes." Both of them grinned and started to laugh.

Jim suddenly stopped laughing and lost all colour, he belched slightly and then a second time much louder as Leonard frantically reached for the sick bowl. As it reached his chin Jim suddenly realised why people sometimes called it a techincolor yawn. For the first couple of waves it fascinated him how the red of the berries and the white of the cream mixed though the brown of the drink. When the yellow of the bile and the empty dry heaving kicked in it was a bit less interesting and rather more annoying. As it became apparent there was nothing more to come out Bones put the offending bowl on the table and hit the nurse call so he could support his patients shoulders.

"Shucks Jim, you never make it easy do you?" Jim smiled again despite the fact he was covered in sweat and trying to suck air in like it was going out of fashion.

The nurse swept in and Leonard gave her some muted orders, the bowl swiftly disappearing and a clean one appearing with some water and an oral hygiene kit, she stood a parade rest for a second till she was dismissed, Bones knew she would be in the anteroom just waiting to come back in and clean up again. The staff on this wing were very well trained.

Bones reclined the chair again and pulled the nasal canula from the oxygen feed over the back of the chair and fitted it with a sad smile.

"This should help with the nausea for a few minutes." Jim followed his movements with just his eyes once more as Bones wiped his face and scanned him, again. The scowl returned and Jim surmised that the machine wasn't telling Bones what he wanted to know. He put it down on the bed and turned back to the table and picked up the water and ordered Jim to rise out before swiftly cleaning round his mouth, noting the ulcers round his gums that he had failed to mention at any point in time.

Finally when a bit of colour returned to his face Bones elevated the chair again and sighed.

"If it's any conciliation they tasted as good coming up as they did going down."

"Well that's something I suppose, I'll put it in my paper as a direct quote. I think we might stop tinkering tonight and let you rest, round two tomorrow."

"Not tomorrow."

"Jim." Growled Bones with a warning. "You don't get to give up after one try."

"No Bones tomorrow is your day off Man, you're going back to see Joanna and nothing is going to stop that."

Leonard pulled up and looked at him, being honest he'd sort of forgotten, more filed it away as something fate would allow to happen. Trust the Kid to remember something like that, he'd only muted it as a possibility a few days ago when Jim was nearly asleep.

"I'll go in a few days, Jo will understand, besides you have a busy day tomorrow."

Jim crossed his arms high on his chest and fixed him with a stare that melted Vulcans.

"I can make it an order."

"No you can't you've been temporarily relieved of command, reduce your stress levels, doctor trumps out of commission captain."

"Vice Admiral in charge of Starfleet Medical trumps CMO." He spat back

"You wouldn't."

"I already have, Phil and I decided this afternoon, two days minimum in Atlanta and no one is going to be filing charges if you decide to stay the week, as long as you let us know." Conceded Jim.

Leonard did a double take, he knew Jim had friends in high places and occasionally had normal conversations with the high ups when they were forced together at functions, a legacy of having the most famous father in history and a childhood with a mother that had counted those who had reached flag rank now as peers, but no one ever got pally with Vice Admiral Boyce.

"Phil? Really, you 'Devil may care Jim' and 'By the books Boyce' managed a conversation without him braining you or reporting you three times."

"We go back aways. Besides he cares for you as much as I do for different reasons."

Bones snorted.

"I've never known him care for anything but that damn cactus on his desk. I know it's not terrestrial but he looks after it like its family."

"He's complicated Bones but he is a good man." Jim shifted in his seat a little and pulled the blanket back over his legs just looking patiently at Bones waiting for the next question.

"Ok spill. How'd you know Phil Boyce, this is going to be interesting."

Jim smacked his lips and smiled. "Check the year he graduated, check his first posting as a candystripper."

"Doctors don't candystripe, we intern." He said to buy himself a little more time as he worked out years, Boyce had done half his med school before he joined so he too had accelerated through the Academy. Leonard resisted the urge to count using his fingers as he silently knocked back the years till the realisation hit him.

"Christ Jim, he was on the Kelvin wasn't he?"

"He started in the same year as Mom and fast tracked through to finish specialisation development with Dad as he did his navigation training and delivered Sam as part of his last rotation here. He'd been called away to the first explosions in engineering or he probably would have delivered me too. He was quite badly burnt by one of the later detonations as he tried to release a casualty, they say he was lucky to be alive."

"He never talks about the scars on his arm, every fresh from the box med cadet asks why they weren't regenerated."

"It took a few days for them to find the rescue shuttles, I imagine it had started healing by then."

Bones just nodded, they were probably infected too if he had been crawling round in engineering spaces just before it happened. That would explain why one of his main research focuses had been on the psychological effects of regenerative therapy, he was nearly as much psychologist as surgeon, which gave him something to think about.

"Starfleet really is just a small family aint it?"

"You don't know the half of it Man, do you know how difficult it is to look some gold top in the eye knowing he changed your diaper, or when you saw them as junior officers at someones wedding off their face and they are giving you six verbal lashes for conduct unbecoming?"

"Well they're only human, well most of them." Said Bones wryly fiddling with a PADD again.

Jim pulled at the sweaty top he was wearing.

"Any chance of getting that blonde nurse back in here for a bed bath Bones?"

"I had to listen to you grouse for the best part of a week about being stuck in bed so I'll help you to the bathroom and you can get a shower, Infant."

Jim shook his head slightly and fiddled slightly with the canula in his hand, until it was smacked away.

"Don't take this the wrong way Bones but I want someone else to help me this time, I don't care really if it's Hulkman or even that pug ugly Tewvuan man / woman / indeterminate third sex auxiliary but I want to be your friend Len, not just a patient you feel you have to fix all the time."

That one made Leonard sit back, Jim was right he was starting to think of his best friend as a set of stats that he had to perfect.

"I understand Jim, but you could make it easier by staying away from my Sick Bay in future." He said pretending to slap him up the back of the head and motioning for Jim to hit the call button. Jim could swear that she heard him twitch his finger as she was there before he had released the button, he was going to suggest Bones snag her for Enterprise before they left again, efficient, proficient and easy on the eye he wanted the best if they were away for five years.

Bones disconnected the now nearly empty drip and Nurse Cathy Strong, by name and nature, helped him across the room, all efficient and kind and he realised that he was worn out by the time he'd walked the twenty or so paces. This could be a long road back, but at least it stretched in front of him when it could have ended very abruptly. Real water over his back did feel good and he was slightly surprised when it stopped, he hadn't realised he had just about fallen off the stool because he was nearly asleep, He felt himself being pushed back, soaped down and then the hose was taken from its high clip and used close to his skin. Pity, he thought absently, he'd seen a few wet nurses uniforms in his time and boy did they cling in the right places. The water stopped and a warm towel found its way round his shoulders, even thoughts of wet t-shirts weren't causing a stir he thought despondently, yep it was a long road.

As he shuffled back to the bed, efficiently turned down, he noticed Bones fiddling with the Bio settings. He cleared his throat loudly in disapproval and was rewarded with Bones patented death stare.

"Your best friends orders." He said with a smirk, it took a second for Jim to catch up and realise he was talking about Phil Boyce again.

"I can't imagine he is bothered about one patient in the hell of the last few weeks." Said Jim as Nurse Efficiency helped him settle in with the right balance of comfort and military detachment.

"He does when even higher ups have been leaning on him for a week to let them in to see you and when both our careers are on the line for unauthorised experiments on a Star Fleet officer."

Jim winced, in all that had gone on he had forgotten to ask much about the mysterious incident of his so called death, he had been told and his swiss cheese brain had decided to neatly box that information away for another time. He could remember some of the cock and bull story they were telling the public, that he had hit a super coolant valve on the way back down and hence had gone into instant and massive hypothermic shock. The uninformed engineers had interpreted this as a lack of pulse but it was really just very slow. The top secret med board had been convinced that Bones had done no wrong because in reality Jim had been dead, he couldn't make it worse and Jim had been told to say that he had willed his body to medical science if anyone asked. Either way they were going to get away with it.

Jim lay back on the very plush pillows, he'd hoped Len would leave tomorrow alone in his haste to run off and see his daughter. Granted he had seen her much more in the past six months than in the three years of the academy, even the hard hearted bitch of an ex-wife knew she would have a difficult time explaining why a hero of the Federation couldn't visit his only child, but Jim knew that Bones often shied away from what he thought was infecting her innocence with his cynical grumping.

"So what does my first official debrief from four Admirals and the President of Star Fleet have to do with my medical charts?"

Bones pressed a final button as the charts flickered and reset before putting the privacy filter on, no one needed to see their own heart beat all night.

"We've been forced into letting them in, we wanted you to have a few more days before they stressed you out but the public want answers and they can't finalise the board of enquiry until they have the main protagonists' testimony."

Jim pointed at himself and was rewarded with a nod.

"We reluctantly agreed on the understanding that you stay in bed," he held a hand up to shut up the protests "so we can monitor your vitals and if medical need says stop they go away."

Jim scowled, he did not need to sit vulnerably in his bed while Archer and his very high up minions tore him apart.

"They have all the facts they need from your logs and everyone else's testimony, they had Spock in for nearly ten hours, I suspect he's going back to Vulcan to meditate for a week. You can't hold up to that sort of punishment whatever you think, besides they have already written the final report."

"Well they can't very well admit the truth, we employed a psychopath, promoted him to Admiral and he brought back a 300 year old augment that we promise we destroyed and between them they nearly brought the Klingon Empire down on our head before crashing a ship we weren't building for reasons of Star Fleet being a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada." Jim suddenly had a flash back of that first meeting with Pike in that bar, he was so proud of the non-combat role of Star Fleet.

"And there you have the press release written for them."

Bones motioned for the nurse to leave the room, she would be the soul of discretion by there was no point in implicating anyone else.

"I've lowered the tolerances down to something more like normal people so if they go too far you'll light up like a Christmas tree and they'll leave. If you want rid of them just bite the side of your tongue or pinch the inside of your arm the pain response should be enough to set it off too." Bones grinned, this was the reason you never played sneaky with Medical – they knew too much.

"Bones I never knew you cared so much" Jim smiled, it was a weight lifted from his shoulders, he had been remembering the days of interrogation and enquiry after the Narada incident. It had ranged from the good cop of being given commendations to the bad cop of being accused of being in league with Nero. Jim had decided after day three that he wasn't the maddest person in the room and that if it had gone on for another hour he was going to cut and run, but when he had turned up for round four they had sat him down, thanked him for his time and patience and outlined his promotion and the medals from three different worlds as if the previous three days hadn't happened.

"Relax Jim, they might not like your style and hopefully you might do something's different if you had the time to look back, but that isn't how life works. Give them the edited version and let them think on their own performance. You didn't give Marcus the keys to the kingdom, someone was signing off on a weapon system three times the size of anything currently required and it wasn't you. Let them think on that."

Bones turned round when he didn't get a response he looked back to see Jim starting to doze. He raised his eyes and shook his head, stupid man he should have said if he was that tired.

Quietly he padded round the bed and attached another drip to the empty cannula and fiddled with the flow rate and finally pulled the blanket a little higher. He stood by the side of the bed for a second or two, just savouring the sight of his chest rising and falling – something that he thought he might never see again.

"Say 'ello to Joanne from Uncle Jim."

Bones saw the slight opening of his eyes and a tiny smile before sleep claimed his friend again.

"See you in a few days, Brat."


End file.
